KPF

Centrally located in the heart of Canary Wharf's busy Montgomery Square and open to the public, this 160-square-meter Sukkah completed in 2010 was larger than most of its kind, accommodating a seating of 150 people for lunch. Based on a 3m wide by 4.2m tall typical module size, each panel was constructed of woven wood that provided light transmission, privacy, and a warm festive look alongside structural stability. The interior was lined with hollow cellular sheeting to provide additional privacy and a gentle illumination. Rattan mats lined the underside of the roof trusses to allow partial visibility to the sky above. A sukkah is a temporary outdoor structure erected each autumn for Sukkot, a week-long Jewish harvest festival that commemorates the 40 years of wandering the desert following the exodus from Egypt. 📸: Inview Photography #KPF #Sukkot #Architecture #CulturalDesign #CanaryWharf

"The Shanghai World Financial Center, International Commerce Centre, Lotte World Tower, and CTF Finance Centre demonstrate that vertical program stacking has redefined the tall tower as a new urban experience. Each building functions as a compressed city, layering retail, office, hospitality, and public space into a single structure,” says KPF Principal Robert Whitlock, FAIA. “The discipline lies in the transitions between programs, where sky lobbies, structural expression, and form must work together to create coherence across hundreds of meters of height." Seen here in section, the Shanghai World Financial Center (SWFC) in Shanghai, China; International Commerce Centre (ICC) in Hong Kong, China; CTF Finance Centre in Guangzhou, China; and Lotte World Tower in Seoul, Korea, each organize a mix of programs vertically in some of the world’s tallest buildings: office (blue), residential (yellow), retail (orange), hospitality (purple), public amenity (pink), greenery (green), and mechanical (grey). The drawings make the logic visible—color by color, floor by floor—tracing how each tower stacks a full range of urban activity within a single structure. At the SWFC, office and retail give way to the Park Hyatt Shanghai on floors 79–93, with a public sky walk at the 100th floor. The ICC anchors a new urban center at Kowloon Station, with The Ritz-Carlton Hong Kong occupying the tower's upper floors. CTF's program ascends from office to residential to hotel, fused together by gracious gathering spaces such as the sky lobby at the 41st floor. At Lotte World Tower, the top ten stories are entirely for public use, featuring an observation deck with an interactive “sky-bridge” element. Together, these four towers—completed across four cities between 2008 and 2017—trace KPF's deep expertise with the mixed-use supertall as a form of urban infrastructure. 📸: Courtesy of Mori Building, @timgriffithphoto , Courtesy Lotte Corporation, @julienlanoo #KPF50 #KPF #Supertall #MixedUse #VerticalCity

Standing 230 meters tall in the heart of Shenzhen’s high-tech Qianhai district, Satcom Tower is the 21st-century mixed-use headquarters for Apstar and is home to other world-class tenants. The design is elegant and vertically expressive, with the tower’s prominent face oriented along Baozhong Road, facing the city’s lush parks.   At street level, a public plaza to the north connects the CBD square to a pedestrian-scale retail corridor to the west. A signature Apstar exhibition space activates the plaza, while sunken gardens offer visitors and passersby the opportunity to explore the site’s varied layers. The project sits near public parks and the Shenzhen waterfront, with subway and bus stations steps away and direct links to an elevated network of footbridges.   📸: @rexzou   #KPF #Shenzhen #HeadquarterDesign #MixedUse #UrbanArchitecture

Completed in 2003, De Hoftoren is the headquarters of the Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science of the Netherlands. A civic landmark, the building has become the centerpiece of The Hague's urban redevelopment, with a public ground-floor passageway linking the complex to the city's Central Train Station. Selected in an international design competition, the scheme includes a tower and a low-rise section surrounding a central courtyard. The orientation of the office plan establishes broad views towards the Malieveld, the city's parkland, and the North Sea. Defined by fritted-glass walls, the inner court, known as "de hof," unifies the scheme and serves as an orientation space for the public. At 472 feet (144 meters), the tower is one of the tallest in the Netherlands and the inaugural winner of the International Highrise Award. 📸: @hgeschphotograhy #DeHoftoren #TheHague #KPF #Architecture #HighriseArchitecture

At the heart of the Bund Fosun Center in Wuhan, China, the Art Mall weaves together retail and art, with terraces and greenery integrated throughout its sinuous form. Two landscaped bridges connect the mall to a retail village to the north and the development’s residential and office towers to the south. The massing emulates flowing water, carving a canyon-like space down the center of the building—a motif echoed in the mall's façade and incorporated throughout the development. The Art Mall contrasts the neighboring supertalls with its pedestrian-scaled tiers, stepping smoothly upward from the retail village. At each level, the façade moves and extends in an organic manner, parting and meeting again, opening space for expansive windows and outdoor terraces. At the most prominent northeast corner, a retractable glass façade faces the linear park—an ideal setting for performances, art installations, and media events. A sculpture park on the roof carries art beyond the interior, sharing the space with a lush garden and amphitheater. 📸: @atchain #KPF #Architecture #RetailDesign #MixedUse #UrbanDesign

How does a neighborhood stay vibrant decade after decade? In this episode of #KPF50 “Perspectives,” we follow Ronald Van Wickler, morning concierge at 64 University Place, through a day at the residential building in Greenwich Village: greeting tenants, supporting their day-to-day needs, and reading the rhythms of the street outside the lobby. A native New Yorker and Greenwich Village regular long before this role, Ron is an essential part of what makes the neighborhood thrive. ▶️ Watch the full video at the link in bio. #KPF #Architecture #GreenwichVillage #ResidentialDesign

Born from a conviction that stacking distinct programs vertically could produce something greater than the sum of its parts, 900 North Michigan crystallized what KPF now considers instinctive about mixed-use design—and proved it at scale. Located on Chicago's Magnificent Mile and completed in 1988, 900 North Michigan Avenue is a 66-story mixed-use building clad in cream-colored limestone and green-tinted glass. The façade is organized into three parts: the base, which lends definition at street level; the middle, which features vertical striation and leads the eye upward; and the top, which features four corner pavilions lit at night as lanterns against the sky. The portal of the building's Michigan Avenue façade opens into a six-story retail atrium, comprising a full mall, that culminates in the grand lobby of Chicago's Four Seasons Hotel. Above, the program continues to climb with office, hotel, and residences and amenities crowning the top nineteen floors. Civic in spirit and exacting in detail, thirty-seven years on 900 North Michigan is still a place where people gather, shop, dine, stay, work, and live. 📸: Jack Pottle, Hedrich Blessing, Drawing by Alan Marten. #KPF #KPF50 #MixedUseDesign #ChicagoArchitecture #MagnificentMile

Situated in northwestern Seoul, the Ilsan Cultural Center takes its cues from logical, rhythmic, and compositional imagery to illustrate the effect of art on the urban environment. Housing an opera house, concert hall, experimental theatre, museum, and library, the complex is unified by a transparent glass screen wall that clarifies inner spaces and frames the central plaza.   KPF’s design introduces pedestrian streets into the composition, thoroughfares dividing the large site into human-scale blocks and forging connections within and around it. Four axes, each employing a distinct material palette, allude to the elements of earth, wind, fire, and water, meeting at the central plaza in a culminating moment. The result: a mixed-use center that naturally gives rise to unplanned street cultures.   📸: Yum Seung Hoon   #KPF #Architecture #CulturalCenter #Seoul #SouthKorea

At the edge of the Shenzhen Bay neighborhood, the Lenovo Houhai Center unifies retail, cultural, and Class-A office space through three defining moves: the gateway, the rotation, and the garden. Two crisp, prismatic towers form a threshold between the nearby mountains and the waterfront, while a landscaped bridge network weaves pedestrian movement through the development. The lower volumes orient east-west for retail flexibility and visual connectivity to adjacent green spaces, while the upper floors rotate north-south, addressing Shenzhen Bay and framing sweeping views of the coastline. Metal fins of varying orientation accentuate each volume, creating a constantly shifting façade that distinguishes one mass from the other. Green space flows throughout, from ground-level parks to podium roof gardens and tower sky terraces, illustrating a biophilic approach that interweaves nature with the workplace. The project is a LEED Platinum- and Gold-certified gateway for one of the world's leading technology companies. 📸: @zhangchao_sz #KPF #Shenzhen #MixedUse #OfficeDesign #Architecture

In the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea, The Clearings is a sensitive redevelopment of a 1930s warehouse that once served as the former Peter Jones Repository—transforming a forgotten industrial footprint into a new residential address for one of London's most storied neighborhoods. The design employs three subtly different building blocks to open the site to its surroundings, providing continuous visible routes that integrate with the wider London context, with garden spaces that animate and soften the streets of Chelsea. The new footprint improves connectivity, permeability, and enhanced light conditions throughout. Victorian in its compositional freedom, Georgian in its detail and materiality—The Clearings establishes a modern reinterpretation of London's traditional architectural languages, one that resonates with the quality and historical relevance of its surroundings. 📸: @plo.mp , @highlevelphoto #KPF #London #ResidentialArchitecture #ContextualDesign

The centerpiece of a growing neighborhood in Western Shenzhen, Hanking Qianhai integrates a graceful simplicity into its design. An H-shaped plan of two offset bars—one shifted east, one set west—is linked by a glass core bridge envisioned as a vertical courtyard, organizing the site and activating its entry with a broad plaza. By offsetting its two segments, the building’s massing is optimized for exceptional views: the northern bar frames Junior Nanshan Mountain, while the southern bar gestures toward Linding Sea.   Retail anchors the podium, while a rooftop garden offers office workers and residents outdoor green space with walking paths and benches. Four elevators with panoramic views bring tenants to upper levels featuring exhibition space, greenery, and apartments each with a private balcony—a mixed-use composition that is as connected to its natural surroundings as it is to the city.   📸: TAL   #KPF #Shenzhen #MixedUse #Architecture #Office

“Inspired by the organization of plant cell structures, One Bay Park’s design establishes a biophilic logic—shifting from precise cellular geometries at the base to more fluid, organic forms as the towers rise,” says Design Director Grace Liao. “Architecture and landscape are conceived as one, softening density while maintaining a clear and distinctive skyline presence. It’s been rewarding to see the response to the project—the first two towers sold out at launch last winter.”   Located in Shenzhen’s Houhai district, one of the city’s most dynamic waterfront and financial hubs, this mixed-use, residential development is conceived as a new benchmark for high-density luxury living.   The family-oriented development will combine luxury residences, a Ritz-Carlton hotel, a kindergarten, and children’s activity zones. A series of layered gardens, courtyards, and pedestrian pathways mediates between the city and the residences, creating a gradient from public activity to private retreat.   One Bay Park establishes a distinct identity within a rapidly evolving skyline, positioning itself as both an urban anchor and a refined residential enclave overlooking Shenzhen Bay.   📸: @atchain , @redgoingblue   #KPF #KPF50 #ResidentialArchitecture #OneBayPark #ShenzhenArchitecture